The Nemesis Program

Chapter Thirty-Nine

They knew who they were dealing with. A full ten-man complement had been deployed for the assault team who were now making the final approach towards the isolated cabin on foot. The team leader led the way, stalking carefully and quietly through the trees, an assault weapon with fitted grenade launcher hanging from his neck. He and the other nine were clad in black tactical entry vests and masks, and wearing radio earpieces. Their automatic rifles were loaded and ready.

Their objective was simple: take out the targets. Take no chances. Leave no trace.

The team leader was Lloyd McGrath. Under the black ski mask, his face was hard. He signalled the men to pause as the parked Land Rover and the cabin beyond it came into view through the foliage. For a few moments, he watched and listened intently. Fifty yards away, the cabin seemed still. In his mind’s eye McGrath could see the two men and the woman inside. The attack would be swift. Ten men. Not even a former SAS guy stood a chance. He might be good; he might be every bit as good as the old man seemed to think he was. But McGrath hadn’t seen a Special Forces superman yet who wasn’t made of the same mortal flesh and blood as anyone else. And McGrath was an expert on flesh and blood: how to destroy the one; how to spill the other.

Ben Hope wasn’t coming out of this alive, not this time. Not after the embarrassment of Paris.

At McGrath’s further signal, four men broke off from the team. Two moved stealthily under cover of the foliage around the sides of the cabin, left and right, working their way around to rejoin at the back. The other pair trotted forward towards the parked Land Rover, keeping low to the ground. They reached the vehicle and crouched down, awaiting further orders from their earpieces.

The forest was completely silent except for the whisper of the breeze through the leaves.

McGrath unslung his AR-15. He slipped a grenade from the holder on his belt into the tube assembly mounted under the weapon’s barrel, forward of the curved 30-round magazine. Resting the weapon in the crook of a tree, he took careful aim at the cabin through his illuminated optical sights. He braced his feet apart against the recoil, then tugged the grenade launcher’s trigger.

The steel cylindrical projectile fired out of the tube with a loud hollow thud. It sailed in an arc towards the cabin and smashed with a tinkling of glass through the front window where McGrath had been aiming.

A moment later, there was a muffled crump as the stun munition detonated inside the cabin. The shockwave was to disorientate the targets. To soften them up, not to kill them. That would come next. The Director wanted neat, identifiable kills, not a mound of charred body parts.

That remit still gave McGrath plenty of scope to enjoy himself. The last time he’d got to do a woman had been the Claudine Pommier job. Now he was looking forward to the sight of the Ryder bitch with her pretty features all messed up by a bullet.

‘Go,’ he said into his throat mike, and watched as the two initial entry pairs stormed simultaneously up to the front and back doors, weapons levelled.

McGrath waited for the gunfire. He heard nothing.

Seconds later the report came back through his earpiece: the targets weren’t in the cabin.

‘Find them,’ McGrath said.

There hadn’t been time to make it to the vehicle or escape into the woods. But the little trap-door under the living room rug had allowed the three of them to slip out under the cabin floor, hidden from view by the wooden skirt that ran around its base.

Ben was lying on his back on the bare, cool earth with Daniel’s shotgun at his side, looking up at the floorboards two feet above him. The sturdy planking had protected them from the stun munition blast. Ben knew that was only the opening gambit.

Roberta was sprawled close by him, clutching the Beretta submachine gun, eyes wide and turned upwards, nervously biting her lip. Ben was a lot more worried about Daniel. The Swede looked about to fall apart in a sweating, gibbering panic. Ben put his finger to his lips and gave him a warning look.

Heavy footsteps rang off the boards over them. Through the gaps in the planking Ben could see the dark figures of the intruders striding about. As far as he could tell, there were three in the living room and a fourth had just walked out of the front door, reporting on a radio. He wasn’t Swedish. He was American.

None of the other three had yet noticed the rug pulled unevenly to one side or the small trapdoor neatly inset into the floorboards, but they soon might. One was standing right over the trapdoor. If he spotted it now, the game was up.

Ben gripped the Mossberg. Its five-shot tube magazine was refilled and there was a sixth cartridge in the breech. He silently, gently, eased off the safety. He gave Roberta a look that told her what he was about to do. His expression said, ‘Stick close by me. It’ll be fine.’ She stared mutely back at him, visibly fluttering with adrenaline.

Ben didn’t believe in prayer at a time like this. He closed his eyes for a second. Visualised his targets. Saw them going down one after another with speed and precision. Readied himself mentally and felt his heart rate ease a notch. He took a deep breath, counted one — two — three.

And then crashed the trapdoor lid open with the barrel of the shotgun and burst up through the floor.